Inability to come up with the clutch hits dealt Taiwan its second straight loss at the 2005 Baseball World Cup competition as it fell to Japan in a 7-1 decision on Wednesday (local time) in Almere, the Netherlands.
Only one of the nine hits that the Taiwanese hitters collected off five different Japanese pitchers managed to knock home a run to prevent Taiwan from being shut out by Japan in a match where Taiwan actually out hit its opponent by a 9-to-8 margin.
The game began with Japan striking first in the top of the fourth when second baseman Daisuke Kusano took Taiwanese starter Keng Po-hsuan deep for a solo home run and a quick 1-0 lead.
PHOTO: WORLD CUP BASEBALL
Taiwan would promptly respond with a run of its own in the bottom of the same inning on third baseman Chen Chiang-ho's RBI single off Japanese reliever Hideto Isomura.
After a scoreless fifth, Japan took a 3-1 lead in the top of the sixth on a run-scoring defensive error by Taiwanese center-fielder Kuo Chun-yu that could have ended the inning without any damage.
Instead, the Japanese made Taiwan pay with a two-run sixth that eventually turned into a 7-1 win.
Reliever Isomura picked up the win for Japan with three innings of one-run ball, while his Taiwanese counterpart Huang Yi-che suffered the loss for allowing the game-winner in the decisive sixth.
Offensively for Japan, the heart of the order had a huge day, accounting for all but one of the seven runs that the Japanese scored.
First baseman Yu Tsung-han's 3-for-4 night highlighted an unproductive Taiwan attack that produced only one run on the nine hits.
Puerto Rico 6, Taiwan 4
A three-run seventh inning by Puerto Rico helped complete a comeback rally for a 6-4 win over Taiwan in Eindhoven on Tuesday.
The Taiwanese were down 1-0 after two innings when Puerto Rican slugger Jose Leon doubled in the first run of the game off Taiwanese starter Cheng Chi-hung.
After Taiwan countered with a run in the third on second baseman Chen Yung-chi's solo homer off starter Ivan Maldonado, Puerto Rico regained the lead by scoring a run in the fourth and fifth on third baseman Edward Guzman's solo blast and right fielder Edgar Velazquez's sacrifice fly.
It took a three-run home run from outfielder Kuo Chun-yu to put Taiwan back on top 4-3 in the bottom of the sixth before the Puerto Ricans rallied again with their own version of a three-run inning to take the lead for good.
Edgar Velazquez's two-run shot off game-loser Chen Hung-wen with two outs capped the Puerto Rican half of the seventh that included a leadoff single and a run-scoring double.
Set-up man Pedro Diaz's two innings of shaky relief (allowing three unearned runs on two hits) was good enough for the win, with closer Felix Villegas picking up the save for retiring the side in order in the final two innings of the contest.
Taiwan 10, Czech Republic 1
Taiwan 12, Spain 2
Taiwan enjoyed an excellent start in the first two contests of the tournament with back-to-back, high-scoring wins over weaker Czech Republic and Spanish teams (10-1 last Saturday and 12-2 on Monday, respectively).
The top of the order, consisting of leadoff man Chen Yung-chi, outfielder Chan Chih-yao, shortstop Hu Chin-lung, and cleanup man Lo Guo-hui, batted a combined 21-for-39 with 11 RBIs to provide plenty of run support for starters Tsai Ying-feng (against the Czech Republic) and Tseng Sung-wei.
About the World Cup
The biennial tournament hosts the world's top amateur baseball talent with 18 teams from six continents. This year's games began on Sept. 2 with the 13-3 trouncing of China by Holland. The championship game is scheduled for Sept. 17.
The top four finishers from each of the two groups in the round-robin preliminaries will compete in the double-elimination quarterfinals.
When Paddy Dwyer arrived in China in 1976, crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of him and his companions — the first Western soccer team to play in the country. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and on the brink of market reforms that would take the country from economic stagnation to explosive growth. “All we could see was lines of people running beside our bus, trying to look in the windows, to see their first visual of a white person,” he said. “It was all bicycles,” he said. “There were very few cars to be seen.” Dwyer,
Jannik Sinner continued his quest to become the first man in history to win five Masters 1000 tournaments in a row with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Danish qualifier Elmer Moller at the Madrid Open on Sunday. The world leader extended his winning streak to 19 matches, a run that began early March in Indian Wells, and he has captured 24 consecutive victories at the Masters 1000 level, dating back to the Paris Masters last October. Searching for a maiden title at this level on clay, Sinner advanced to the round of 16 at the Caja Magica with a 77-minute performance against
Some of Clearlake Capital Group’s largest investors are growing increasingly concerned about how much time the company’s co-founders are spending on sports investments as they have struggled to complete the fundraising for the private equity firm’s latest flagship fund. One of Clearlake’s co-founders, Behdad Eghbali, has been spending what some investors described as a disproportionate amount of time on the firm’s investment in Chelsea Football Club in recent months. Now, co-founder Jose E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, are nearing a record US$3.9 billion deal to acquire the San Diego Padres. That personal investment by Feliciano has set off the latest
A new NZ$683 million (US$404 million) stadium that was a symbol of Christchurch’s struggle to rebuild after a deadly earthquake struck the New Zealand city is to host its first match tomorrow in front of a sellout crowd. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 185 people in February 2011 and toppled or damaged buildings, including the city’s old Lancaster Park. The stadium, which hosted international rugby and cricket, and was home to the Canterbury Crusaders, was badly damaged and never reopened. It was bulldozed in 2019 and turned into sports fields, leaving the Crusaders without a permanent home. Government funding for a new stadium was
RSS